Right time, place for Lake Geneva director

Darien Schaefer is the new president of the Geneva Lake Area Chamber of Commerce. Schaefer wants to encourage local residents to embrace the tourism industry here and share their enthusiasm for Lake Geneva with others. Terry Mayer photo

LAKE GENEVA — It took about six months and dozens of candidates, but now there's a new president in charge of the Geneva Lake Area Chamber of Commerce

Since the May retirement of George Hennerley, who headed up the chamber for more than 30 years, the chamber search committee had been digging for a candidate who fit the bill. After an arduous search, they came up with Darien Schaefer.

“We went through SearchWide, which is an executive recruitment firm, and they actually had close to 70 applicants originally,” said Tammie Carstensen, general manager of Harbor Shores and a member of the search committee. “They recommended 15 specific candidates and we tried to finalize it down to about six people. Then the committee interviewed all six over a period of two days and that brought it down to the final two.

“We actually brought them here to spend a few days and let them look around Lake Geneva and the Geneva lakes area. We wanted them to bring their families in and see what they thought about our community. After a lot of thought and some final interviewing, we chose Darien.”

Before coming to Lake Geneva, Schaefer had been the executive director of the Wausau/Central Wisconsin Convention & Visitors Bureau since 2000.